One of the most popular niches for virtual assistants is in real estate. If you want to become areal estate virtual assistant, you can create a lucrative career.
More and more people are dreaming of having the ability to work from anywhere and are wondering:“How to become a real estate virtual assistant?” It is a highly specialized niche that gives you a competitive advantage over other virtual assistants.
Maybe you are a stay-at-home mom in need of some extra income or a digital nomad with a passion to travel the world? Learning how to become a real estate virtual assistant can give you the freedom to live the life you are dreaming of.
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What Does a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Do?
Areal estate virtual assistantcan provide various services to real estatebusinesses from a distant location. For a real estate business, it is vital to have someone reliable to handle administrative tasks.
What Skills Do You Need to Become a Real Estate Virtual Assistant?
The first thing you need to do is to think about your skills. What are you good at and what skills do you have that can serve or benefit your clients in real estate?
Some essential skills in real estate virtual assistance are proficiency in spoken and written English, ability to create spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides, making property and market research, data entry and management, phone handling, managing social media, managing property listings, verifying and setting up appointments with buyers/sellers, responding to email, managing budget and receivables.
Identify your weak skills in these areas and learn them by doing research, taking an apprenticeship or signing up for some courses.
How to Become a Real Estate Virtual Assistant
Learning how to become a real estate virtual assistant is a process of a few different steps.
There are many online courses available on real estate virtual assistance. If you don’t have any experience in the real estate industry, these courses will help you with everything you need to know to become areliable real estate virtual assistant.
A great way to start out as a virtual assistant if you don’t yet have any experience is to take a virtual assistant course. Personally, I recommend becoming a member of the Fully Booked VA System. This is a membership area for virtual assistants with amazing courses created by Gina Horkey from Horkey Handbook. I took her courses myself when I was starting out my business as a VA and it helped me so much to get on the right path.
The membership will provide you with all information you’ll need to start your VA business. You will become Horkey HandBook VA-Certified and unlock access to tones of client leads that you can pitch as well as five skills courses. The skills courses will help you to niche down and become a specialist in your chosen market. Real estate is one of the niche courses you can choose. There are also monthly live workshops to dive deeper and you have access to a private forum.
There are also virtual assistant agencies specialized in the real estate industry. These agencies are great if you don’t have any experience as they can provide you the necessary training to become a virtual assistant.
A benefit of signing up with thesereal estate virtual assistance agenciesis that you will be guaranteed constant education and consistent work. The best ones frequently refresh their trainings to keep their virtual assistants updated on the market.
Other VAs with similar experience might compete with you to getting in one of these VA agencies. If you are a new Virtual Assistant with no experience you will have to show the agency that you have a willingness to learn and enhance. Many of these agencies value commitment, loyalty, flexibility and passion to learn over experience
How Do I Start My Own Real Estate Virtual Assistant Business?
Having Your Own Website
Having a website shows clients that you are professional and serious about establishing your profession on the market. A website gives you the opportunity to emphasize your skills and accomplishments. You can do this by creating a portfolio of your work and including social proof like testimonials from previous or current clients.
Just remember that your website needs to have the following qualities:
- Fast page speed
- Mobile responsive
- High-quality content
- Aesthetic design
- Easy to navigate
- Functional features
Use Social Media
People spend a lot of time on social media today and they are impacted by what they see or read onthe platforms.
A great way to make your VA business more visible is to establish your business in 2-3 social media platforms and schedule at least a few posts every week.
Post articles and share valuable content. Engage with your audience and reply to people who leave comments on your content.
Social media is also a great way to connect with similar businesses and or market your services to potential clients.
Create a Professional Online Profile
You need to create an attractive and professional profile to stand out on these platforms. If it’s possible it’s always a good idea to showcase your portfolio with work samples or include a link to your personal website.
Find Real Estate Virtual Assistant Jobs
Online job platforms are great to use to find and sign up clients from the real estate industry. These platforms help to match potential clients with virtual assistants. Among the most popular are Upwork, FlexJobs, Fiverr and Freelancer.
Real Estate Virtual Assistant Services
Just like any actual, physical assistant, a real estate virtual assistant can do just about anything they do — probably even more, including the tasks below:
Managing Social Media Presence
Businesses of all shapes and sizes across industries have realized the important benefits of building a strong presence on social media.
According toa recent survey by the National Association of Realtors, the real estate industry is no different, where 77% of realtors actively use social media for real estate in some way.
To maintain a strong social media presence you have to spend time and hard work. Vertical Response conducted asurvey of small businesses and social mediaand found that 43 % of small businesses spend around six hours per week on social media.
This is a huge opportunity for real estate virtual assistants to offer their help.
Maintain Listings
Relators often use multiple sites to list all of their properties. They often have a hard time keeping these up to date, while keeping up with their client base and developing new business.
A real estate virtual assistant can help to maintain listings, so that these are always up to date and the relator can focus on the things they do best.
Setting up Appointments with Buyers/Sellers
Handling incoming and outgoing phone calls, answering general inquiries, and setting appointments are other tasks a real estate virtual assistant can be responsible for.
The questions asked by people calling a realtor’s office are generally simple questions that can be resolved quickly, like checking if a certain property is still for sale or finding out open house times.
Property Research
Property research is probably one of the most time-consuming tasks in a real estate office, but if done correctly, it can be valuable and create new business opportunities. This is a perfect task to leave to a real estate VA.
Responding to Email
Realtors often get a large number of emails. Live chats on the website are common as well. A real estate virtual assistant can deal with all the minor, less-important emails and chat inquiries so that the relator can focus on managing the ones that really are important.
As a Virtual Assistant, the Internet will be your work place. If you want your career to thrive, you should consistently work on building your online presence.
Here are three ways to make your business more visible:
Managing Budget and Receivables
Lastly, a Real Estate Virtual Assistant can keep track of budget including expenses, bills, refunds and payroll. The VA will make sure that everything is structured in one consistent system, that books are always balanced, and that staff and bills are paid on time.
How Much Does a Real Estate Virtual Assistant Make?
Theaverageannual pay (as of Dec, 2020) for aVirtual Real Estate Assistantin the United Statesis$51,899 a year. But you can earn much more depending on your skills, what clients you work with and what tasks you are helping them with.
There are some key things you need to be aware of to land that desired opportunity.
Related article: How to become a virtual assistant with no experience
Conclusion
Becoming a real estate virtual assistant is a process of learning and growing.
It might take a while to build a portfolio of clients, but to start out and get going, all you need is just one client.
If you over-deliver and make the client pleased with your services, you will have other referrals coming your way on autopilot
As a relator, hiring a real estate virtual assistant is an amazing action you can take to increase your business productivity and profits.
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